Gihundwe Hospital Gets Blood Bank Refrigerator

Guhundwe Hospital in Rusizi district has a set of new and modern blood bank equipment that will ensure proper and safe storage of blood required by patients in emergency situations, Express News reports.

The blood bank refrigerator is essential equipment in the immunohematology department and provides safe and convenient storage of whole blood, blood components such as blood cells, plasma, and reagents.

According to the Ministry of Health this blood bank will also serve Mbilizi hospital, Bushenge hospital and Kibogora hospital.

Experts say that stored blood has shelf life of 1 year from the date of collection.

According to US based Johns Hopkins study, red blood cells stored longer than three weeks begin to lose the capacity to deliver oxygen-rich cells where they may be most needed.

In a report published online in the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia, the Johns Hopkins investigators say red cells in blood stored that long gradually lose the flexibility required to squeeze through the body’s smallest capillaries to deliver oxygen to tissue.

“There’s more and more information telling us that the shelf life of blood may not be six weeks, which is what the blood banks consider standard,” says study leader Steven M. Frank, M.D., an associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “If I were having surgery tomorrow, I’d want the freshest blood they could find.”

Meanwhile, in 2013 Gihundwe Hospital got a new emergency ward which cost Rwf90million.

The ward provides acute care for patients that report at the hospital without prior appointment- mostly from accidents or other life-threatening cases that require immediate attention and initial treatment before the patients is admitted.